Happy 44th Birthday to our friends at Macadam Forbes!
We are excited to celebrate with Macadam Forbes this month. Over the last 44 years, their team of experienced and knowledgeable agents has become a leader in the Portland commercial real estate market.
This spring the amazing duo of Cindy (Director of Operations) and Raymi (Marketing Manager), asked us to add a little "sizzle" to their website... (a site we built in 2018). The sizzle would consist of some visual updates and a reduction in some overall page scroll. To quote Cindy, “more cowbell” with some tweaks to the look and feel by adding more edgy and treated imagery. Over the course of a month or two, Paul made format changes throughout the site. He tweaked the size of the images on the listings page, button colors, and profile cards for the agents. But this concept begged for more video or animation. However, as we approached the final QA, we were still waiting on the video assets. And with a goal of a birthday launch, the Macadam Forbes team was under the gun.
[Before the updates]
So with two weeks to launch, we stepped in and offered to take on the creative. Starting with the homepage header image/video. Since Macadam Forbes was already celebrating their birthday at the end of July, they created a retro postcard ad in the Portland Business Journal. I started by dissecting the postcard into layers which helped give a video-like appearance of movement. For the sake of time and size, I rendered the loop as a transparent GIF. This isn’t something that I get to do that often, so there was some trial and error while testing different render codecs and sizes. I also added an occasional “glitch” effect to the background image of Portland.
[After the updates]
The next task was to incorporate some scanned ads of the Macadam Forbes team in the 80s into the header of the About Us page. Keeping in mind the original goals, I formatted the images into a video that slowly transitioned the images from one to another. I also created a static tv background that gave the animation a grainy texture.
We were excited to launch the updated site two days before Macadam Forbes's official birthday on July 26th, and couldn’t be happier that Cindy and Raymi were pumped with the outcome. If you ask us, our favorite type of client relationship is one that is built on trust, humility, and a collaborative approach. We will always choose to partner with our clients for the long term and want to celebrate every victory with our clients!
This is what Cindy had to say about working with us;
“Back in 2018, we partnered with Cascade Web to create our website. Together we were able to create a website that was easy to maintain and beautifully designed. Over the years, Cascade Web has helped us with small tweaks and adjustments, but it needed a fresh to make it more dynamic.
As a small company, updating our website to stay fresh and relevant is not something we can readily dedicate time and resources to. Additionally, redesigning a website can be costly. Cascade Web was able to evaluate the current website and offer cost-effective changes that would add the “sizzle” we were looking for without having to do a complete overhaul.
Our concept was to add video to our home page and our About Us page, but we ran into last-minute production issues that would keep us from meeting the launch deadline. Cascade Web quickly presented a temporary fix using creative, out-of-the-box ideas which could easily be executed to meet our deadline. Two weeks later, we were able to launch a refresh of our website to match up with our birthday celebration ad campaign.
The best part of working with Cascade Web is their devotion to what is most important to us is most important to them. They strive to understand our company culture and dedicate their efforts to maintaining that integrity in what they produce.”
~ Cindy Leitner
Thank you Cindy, for the opportunity to continue to bring the sizzle!
Sincerely,
Simon